1. Antebellum Reform Movements
American History

2. Lyman Beecher Protestant minister Leads the Second Great Awakening
Religious revival
Women heavily involved and seen as moral saviors of men

3. Transcendentalism The ultimate truth transcends the physical world
TRANSCENDENTALISM = a philosophy that asserts the primacy of the SPIRITUAL over the MATERIAL and EMPIRICAL
The ultimate truth transcends the physical world

4. Transcendentalists and Nature
Nature was the source of deep Human inspiration
Helps individuals see truth within their souls
Genuine Spirituality come through communion with nature

5. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leader, Unitarian Minister, devoted to Transcendentalism
Wrote Essays, Lectures, Very Popular
Advocated the commitment of the individual to full exploration of the inner capacities.

6. RW Emerson: essay 1841 “Self Reliance”
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind”
Self Reliance:
was a quest for unity of the Universe
The wholeness of god
The great spiritual force/essence of spiritual soul
Each person has innate capacity to find divinity personally

7. Henry David Thoreau Transcendentalist Individuals should:
Work for self-realization
Resist conformity
Should respond to own instincts
Walden- in the Concord (Mass) Woods
Most famous book
Lived alone for 2 years

8. Thoreau
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what It had to teach.
And not when I came to die I discover that I had not lived”

9. Thoreau Went to jail briefly Refused to pay a Poll Tax
Protested Slavery
1849: Essay “Resistance to Civil Government”
An individual’s personal morality has first claim on his actions
Government that violated personal morality had no legitimate authority
An individual response should be
Civil Disobedience or Passive Resistance

11. Temperance Religious based movement against Alcohol
“The church must take… on subject of Temperance, the moral reform, all the subjects of practical morality.”
Crime, disorder, poverty caused by alcoholism
Drinking was especially a problem for Women- husband abuse them, and kids, and drink their money.

12. Temperance
Will later evolve into national movement through the 19th century
Eventually will lead to prohibition of alcohol 18th Amendment to the Constitution [ ]

13. Education Public Education not widely established
Some progress in Massachusetts
New interest in Pub Ed
To create a stable social values=conformity
Horace Mann is the leader
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

14. Education
Mann
“An educated electorate is essential to the working of a free Political system.”
Education “only way to counter…the tendency to domination of capital and servility of labor.”
Advocated protestant values- thrift, order, discipline, punctuality, respect for authority
No wide spread change comes from this movement.

15. Asylum and Prison Reforms
Rehabilitation is the key
Asylum=mental health
Prison= criminals
Rise of the Penitentiary
“A place to cultivate penitence”
Through discipline
Problem- Mentally ill and criminals kept in terrible conditions
Reform is key
Dorothea Dix
Some progress

16. Women’s Rights Movement
Lucretia Mott
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Strong connection between Women’s Rights and Abolition movement

17. Seneca Falls Convention 1848
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Lucretia Mott
Frederick Douglass
Declaration of Sentiments
Emulated Declaration of Independence

18. Abolitionism 1830s – Opposition to slavery begins to change
Before, abolitionists would promote gradualism or colonization
Abolition wants an immediate end to slavery with no compensation to slaveholders
Garrison establishes the Liberator newspaper.

19. David Walker
Publishes Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in 1829.
Speaks of the conditions of African Americans in the United States.
[Read about it for homework]

20. Garrison in the Liberator
“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

21. Other Abolitionist Leaders
Other protestant ministers
Wealthy financers
Followers of the women’s movement [Lucretia Mott]
Grimke sisters
Free African Americans
Frederick Douglass

22. Response to Abolition Seen as a threat to labor and social system
Economic problems for the North
South is becoming increasingly reliant on slave labor
Not industrializing
Slave rebellion